Black Badger

Yoon came and took Ye-hyeon away.

Ye-hyeon, with swollen eyes, greeted Yoon silently and handed him a photo without a word.

Yoon peered into the photo.

Then he smiled faintly.

"You look alike."

That's what I meant.

While I smiled quietly, Ye-hyeon looked at the photo again.

Even as he walked toward the house directly across from us, he glanced down at the photo several times. A delivery truck—who knew how many times it had come before—dropped off a gift and drove away.

Ye-hyeon reached the front gate, piled with boxes, and stopped in his tracks.

I greeted him without erasing my faint smile.

"Come in. Happy birthday."

"Hilde."

Ye-hyeon turned to look at me.

I blinked once.

"Yes?"

"Don't get caught for as long as possible."

It was clearly an order, but it sounded strangely like a desperate plea.

"I won't be able to shield you from the resentment and hatred that will pour out once you're discovered."

I smiled quietly.

It seemed that was what had been bothering him.

But it was something I deserved to face. If we hadn't come to Earth, this war wouldn't have happened. The lives of those around us would have been different too. Ricardo's family, for instance, wouldn't have been buried under their home from an air raid.

They had reason to hate me.

My comrades had more than enough reason to hate me as well.

"Is the administrative issue okay?"

"We can come up with some justification one way or another."

Ye-hyeon replied in a hoarse voice.

"We might avoid turning it into a big issue by applying pressure. But if it does become an issue, it will be announced that you bear the greatest responsibility."

"Isn't that the reality?"

If I hadn't suddenly appeared, none of this troublesome situation would have arisen.

Of course, there was the option of placing me under Colton. But that would have given Colton too much influence. Eventually, it would have grown into a power that could upset the balance.

That's why Ye-hyeon took the risk and registered me as a Black Badger.

I would have made the same decision in his position.

I was grateful for that judgment. I could kneel before Ye-hyeon and press my lips to the back of his hand, but before Colton, I couldn't lower my body even if my knees shattered.

"I can't cloud the organization's atmosphere just to protect myself. I trust you'll handle it in the proper manner."

Ye-hyeon stared at me for a long time with bloodshot eyes.

To ease the anguish in his gaze, I added,

"In the past, I betrayed my kin of my own will."

It was a fact I couldn't deny even if I wanted to.

"So, shouldn't I bear the consequences accordingly?"

I had no right to complain about the pain.

After finishing my words with a smile, Ye-hyeon gazed at me quietly.

The cold winter air.

The faint warmth of sunlight filtering through the chill warmed my body. Yoon stood in silence, waiting for our conversation to end.

Ye-hyeon broke the quiet with small, slow words.

"Thank you for the photo."

He looked like a child again.

Thinking that, I bowed my head.

*

A few days later, a message came from Ricardo.

[Are you planning to come to your senses only after your head gets smashed open?]

I'd heard he'd gone up to the rooftop after drinking.

It seemed to support voice input. Feeling a chill run through me, I quickly replied. It wasn't intentional, and I had no plans to do anything dangerous. If I'd worried him, I was sorry.

No reply came.

Ricardo read my message and left me on read.

Such a senior-like response.

'Well, whatever the reply, it must have scared him.'

And so the year-end party passed. My short vacation ended too. It was a better end to the year than I'd tensed up for. As the new year approached, Yoon started pushing me hard again. To make up for the muscle loss from drinking and resting, the intensity ramped up.

I didn't complain. I wanted to regain my full strength quickly too.

It was nice to fall asleep without dreams after intense workouts.

The stability from a regular, simple routine felt good. So for a while, I forgot all about games. Both the one Yoon had taken before and the new one Jae-yeon gave me—I completely forgot them as I repeated the cycle of training and sleeping.

Until Yoon showed up on the first weekend of the new year holding From E.

[My main function.

/copyright Copyright Eve. All rights reserved.]

There were a lot of lines above and below, but I only understood that part.

Eve's name was there.

Yoon explained flatly as I froze beside him.

"A developer named Eve made it, right after the First War ended, one year later."

The mentor crossed his arms and fixed his gaze on the screen.

"That's all we've figured out. It's strangely hard to find any information. It's old, sure, but not being able to find even photos or a bio is odd."

"They probably erased it all."

I murmured, staring at the line with Eve written on it.

I couldn't tear my eyes away.

"She said she erased everything to come face us."

I remembered her name when I was high on drugs.

Seeing it written on the screen now brought back another memory. It was amazing. Eve was a scientist who loved her field of research madly. She was also upright by nature. Even when conducting experiments on me, she always checked carefully to ensure it didn't harm my health. That came to mind.

Very different from Choi Yoon or John Mullen.

"She was good."

"Are you picking a fight?"

"It's just stating facts."

After replying, I quickly handed Yoon the unopened bottle of liquor.

It was a late birthday gift and a bribe.

"Ah, this is a birthday present. January 4th, right?"

"Yeah."

The mentor took the liquor.

Yoon now responded naturally to my reactions.

He set the bottle on the desk and turned back to the screen. I stared at the screen glumly too.

One year after the First War.

When no one knew the Second War would break out. She made this game in the ruins of a collapsed city.

"Eve definitely survived the First War."

"Assuming this info is accurate."

"Where was I back then?"

I tried to recall a time when, no matter how hard I tried, even the shadow of the memory wouldn't come.

The life before the war broke out. The world before coming to Earth—fragments of those memories I remembered.

But I couldn't figure out how I, who vanished to stop Kyle, ended up falling out of the headquarters portal decades later. I had no memory of seeing the war end. I remembered preparing for the war's start, though.

Because of this blank in my memory, my body had deteriorated terribly.

"I don't even know if I was on Earth."

Yoon muttered in a low voice.

"Back then, Ye-hyeon and I were in our early thirties.... If you were alive inside a core, Lee Seung-hyun must have retrieved your sword from Ye-hyeon."

"Yes, I think so too."

"At least Lee Seung-hyun and his gang didn't know your whereabouts."

The mentor's low voice resonated in the cabin.

"And there's not much they can't find."

Did I live outside the core like Jin?

Or was I in a coma? Hiding in someone's home without going out? The problem was, no matter how plausible the hypothesis, it didn't connect to the fact that I fell out of the headquarters portal.

Without realizing it, I let out a huge sigh.

Yoon stood from his chair.

"Have you played K?"

"Not yet. In case you wanted to watch like last time."

"Ah, good. Then I'll watch like before, so start right now."

I didn't answer.

Instead, I ignored Yoon's gaze as best I could and focused on the screen.

Before he could speak, I said,

"Was this game made to commemorate me?"

"It seems that way for now."

This time, the mentor cut in before I could add more.

I thought he wasn't interested in people, but after spending so much time together, Choi Yoon knew me too well now.

"If you don't want to start K, do it next week."

He'd caught me trying to change the subject on purpose.

"Instead, find the Easter eggs in E during that time."

I turned my head.

The man looked at me with cold, black eyes.

Meeting that icy gaze, I nodded.

This order was much more comfortable mentally.

K definitely wasn't Kyle—(Kyle despised "computer games" themselves.)—but even so. I wasn't ready to play a game that might contain some unknown message.

I reached out to turn off the computer and mumbled,

"Thanks for looking into it."

The man headed to the entrance without a particular reply. I pretended to follow him and vaguely saw him off.

I couldn't lift my gaze straight until Yoon's footsteps faded away.

*

When had I started thinking there were no Easter eggs?

It was around the time the sun had passed and the moon had cycled once more.

Two days before the first weekend of February.

I still hadn't found any significant Easter eggs in From E.

"I'm unlucky, but I'm really good at finding these things."

"Yeah, you're a game addict after all."

Addict, huh.

I reflexively made a sullen face but couldn't properly retort and continued.

"Since I haven't found any yet, it seems likely there are no Easter egg elements at all. It could be that I'm just not finding the clues."

"Then drop it and play K first."

Yoon replied as we walked down the headquarters corridor.

The day was ending. The time when office workers headed home in droves.

We'd closed the shooting range door and were on our way to the mess hall.

"There might be an Easter egg that only unlocks after playing all the series."

"Huh, you know a bit about games."

I was a little surprised.

"Did you know about Easter eggs like that?"

The mentor raised an eyebrow and looked at me.

He was still a man who conveyed his intentions efficiently without words.

I matched his stride.

"No, I just thought you wouldn't do something unproductive like games...."

He even asked last time if this was fun, right?

"I never imagined you'd look for Easter eggs...."

Weeeeng! Weeeeng! Weeeeng!

A loud noise shook the headquarters.

The conversation cut off.

People stopped in their tracks.

Gazes dropped to phones simultaneously.

About half a year into being a Black Badger, I knew well that this alarm was a mobilization order.